Deal or No Deal 2

I chanced upon two epic episodes of this low-IQ game show while channel surfing on two different nights, and stayed on to satisfy my sick sense of humor (which I learned growing with Saturday Night Live) by expecting greed to up-end players into disastrous results, then chuckle at their misfortune.

If you still don't know the classic game revived this year with host Howie Mandel, play it here: http://www.boredatwork.net/link/deal-deal/

On night #1, a cheery woman is down to 5 cases: one $400,000 case and four much lower---highest of which was $400. To go into the next round and hope to garner a better offer, she has to pick and eliminate one more case, but avoid $400,000. Howie nudges her to let Grandma pick a case, perhaps a welcome charm to end a string of bad luck. So Nana proudly gets up the stage, picks a case, gets right up to open it to reveal the worst. Little miss grand daughter wins less than $400.
On night #2, a high-ranking military officer manages having $300,000 and $400,000 available in late rounds amid 4 low-value cases. In some cheesy drama twist added by the show's producers, out comes Sir General's two pre-teen daughters especially invited because they don't see Daddy too often. Howie puts them to the task of deciding, instead of Daddy, whether $94,000 is a good-enough deal rather than risk surging on for 300 or 400 grand more. They cry their reluctant father into taking 94 grand. Point is, Daddy had very good odds of getting a better offer. But he takes the deal. In the end, Howie let Daddy General run through the rest of the game just to see what could have been. He painstakingly made what would have been the right decisions (or guesses) and actually would have come out with $400,000.

Lessons learned?

It's not greed that destroys people. It's their next of kin.